[rezlov]

That's the name of the game. You take a risk to make big money, and sometimes that risk doesn't pay off.

[JohnTHaller]

*Most of the time in the case of startups

[rhizome]

Or you start working for a company thinking their product(s) are cool, strong and survivable as its own thing, and then it turns out the plan was not to build a business but to cash out.

[vinceguidry]

You're still taking a risk, only you're betting with your time and not money.

[rhizome]

Actually it was only 7 months and I still got ripped in the deal. You can say "low risk, low reward," but in the big picture my reward was sorely out of scale to my contribution. Sorely.

[pm24601]

or you get laid off, or you get diluted, or it takes 6 years and you want to do something else with the rest of your life, ....

[rhizome]

To be sure, it was a thinly-veiled anecdote.

[draw_down]

Different people have different ideas on the value of "sometimes" in that sentence :)